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Dr. Jay Rosenbloom, left, is a pediatrician leading the charge for child vaccinations. In this 2013 photo, 2-year-old George Schenck (in the arms of his mom Angela) celebrates getting his MMR, a vaccine that is an immunization shot against measles, mumps, and rubella.
(The Oregonian/file)

For the umpteenth time, reputable U.S. scientists have reviewed the literature on childhood vaccines and found the evidence to be overwhelming: Vaccines are safe, they save children's lives, and the risks of serious complications are rare.

Yet scientists have only evidence and reason on their side. Anti-vaccine advocates have the Internet, bursting with conspiracy theories, fear-mongering and Jenny McCarthyism. It's hardly a fair fight. It will require more education, and careful enforcement of stronger vaccine standards, to get Oregon's childhood vaccination rates at safer, near-universal levels.

A massive review of vaccine safety, published this month in the medical journal Pediatrics, screened more than 20,000 scientific titles and 67 papers about vaccines for diseases such as measles, whooping cough and rotavirus. They found no links to autism, no causes for alarm. Their findings support conventional medical wisdom that the life-saving benefits of vaccines, both for individual patients and the community, vastly outweigh the minuscule risks of an adverse reaction.

Yet suspicions surrounding vaccines have taken hold, and they're as persistent as a hospital superbug. Fully 20 percent of Americans think doctors and the government "still want to vaccinate children even though they know these vaccines cause autism and other psychological disorders," according to a study released this spring of common medical conspiracy theories. Suspicion of vaccines is right up there with the fear that the government is suppressing the truth that cell phones cause cancer (20 percent agree) and the worry that the Food and Drug Administration is deliberately hiding information about natural cures for cancer (37 percent agree).

Vaccine-related conspiracy theories have contributed to a national rise in the percentage of parents who postpone or avoid immunizing their children against still-deadly diseases. Oregon seems to be an epicenter of disbelief: The rate of Oregon parents seeking non-medical exemptions from school immunization requirements nearly tripled over the past decade, and Oregon has the nation's highest rate of kindergarteners who enter school with waivers for one or more vaccines.

That puts everyone in Oregon at higher risk for deadly outbreaks – including infants who've received all their shots, right on schedule.

Dino William Ramzi, a Camas doctor who serves as president of the Clark County Medical Society, says our region is particularly vulnerable to the return of measles and other near-vanquished diseases that can lead to brain infections and other serious complications: "After 15 years of misinformation, complacency due to the lack of domestic deaths and a series of paranoid and ignorant conspiracy theories, we are starting to see outbreaks," he explained recently. "This is misinformation with a body count."

A new Oregon law that took effect this spring requires parents to get a doctor's signature or watch an online educational module before opting out of required vaccines for their children. Though it will take time to measure the law's impact, the likelihood of positive change is high: Washington's opt-out rate plummeted after the state started requiring a doctor's signature to skip essential vaccines.

Still, Oregon has reservoirs of skepticism that will be hard to overcome. (This is a state that treats fluoride like an industrial poison, after all.) The challenge, as ever, is to convince parents of the dead-seriousness of the diseases themselves without ever needing a local outbreak to make the case.